I saw this on Tam's blog and decided to play.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you started but did not finish.
3) Highlight the books you love. (I'm following Tam's policy of highlighting books I did love, even if I don't love them anymore. I am highlighting because it's prettier... and because I don't know how to underline.)
4) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 or less and force books upon them.
I have read 56 of the books (or sets of books) listed. 2 of them I started to read but didn't finish. (At least 10 of the unread books I have seen in a movie version, which in many cases has made me much less likely to seek out the book.) How many have you read?
It is basically inconceivable to me that anyone who attended school in the United States could have read only 6 (or fewer) of these books. I read 21 of them as part of class assignments in junior high or high school (marked with *).
A few of these books I haven't even heard of (I marked these with a ?).
Would anyone like to make a case for any of the books I haven't read as ones that I should try?
I would like to suggest A Town Like Alice, which I just read a couple of months ago and enjoyed well beyond what I had expected. (Of course, I am now raising your expectations, thus dashing any hopes that you might be similarly surprised by this book.) It contains two love stories, a war, an interesting detailing of the efforts of a female entrepreneur, and a bit of a travelogue. Oh my word, it is a novel all right.
I'm not sure who compiled the list, or what criteria the person used, but I think it's safe to assume this is intended to be a list of "good" books that people "should" read. What in your opinion are the most egregiously absent books, given that premise?
I would nominate The Phanton Tollbooth for children's literature and The Stranger (by Albert Camus) and Gulliver's Travels for classic literature. The obvious pick for a modern literature selection is Robertson Davies' excellent Cornish Trilogy or Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco.
Here is the list:
1. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger ?
2. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
3. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
4. Lord of the Flies - William Golding *
5. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
6. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
7. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
8. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
9. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte *
10. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee *
11. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte *
12. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell *
13. His Dark Materials (trilogy) - Philip Pullman
14. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens *
15. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
16. The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
17. Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger *
18. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
19. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky *
20. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
21. Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis
22. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – C.S. Lewis
23. Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
24. Animal Farm - George Orwell *
25. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley *
26. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck *
27. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
28. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
29. Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White
30. Hamlet - William Shakespeare *
31. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
32. Complete Works of Shakespeare [Is this a joke?]
33. Ulysses - James Joyce
34. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad *
35. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
36. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen *
37. The Bible (most of it) *
38. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald *
39. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
40. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
41. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
42. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
45. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
46. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
47. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
48. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
49. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
50. Harry Potter series (6/7) - JK Rowling
51. Little Women - Louisa M. Alcott
52. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy *
53. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
54. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks ?
55. Middlemarch - George Eliot
56. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
57. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
58. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
59. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens *
60. Emma - Jane Austen
61. Persuasion - Jane Austen
62. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
63. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
64. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
65. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
66. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
67. Anne of Green Gables – L.M. Montgomery
68. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
69. Atonement - Ian McEwan
70. Dune - Frank Herbert
71. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
72. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth ?
73. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon ?
74. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
75. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
76. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
77. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
78. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
79. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy *
80. Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding
81. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
82. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
83. Dracula - Bram Stoker
84. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson ?
85. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
86. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome ?
87. Germinal - Emile Zola ?
88. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
89. Possession - A.S. Byatt
90. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens *
91. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell ?
92. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
93. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
94. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry ?
95. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
96. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton ?
97. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks --- I cannot read horror, so NEVER
98. Watership Down – Richard Adams
99. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
100. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas *
5 comments:
I've read 26 of the books, seen 28 of the movies (I've read only 1 book that I saw the movie, which is Gone with the Wind)and never heard of 16 of the books. I didn't count the complete works of Shakespeare because I have read only 13 of the plays. I didn't count the Bible either since I haven't read the entire thing, although I have read much of it.
If the movie of The Da Vinci Code is anything like the book it is a lame book and should not be on this list.
I am wondering why Edgar Alan Poe and Dr. Zhivago are not on the list.
It's a weird list for sure.
When I did mine, I had a hard time figuring out whether to say I loved "The Life of Pi" or not. I loved it until the end when it got to its moronic "point." Up until then it is a well-written, funny, and extremely easy to read adventure story.
Robert noticed the weird double listing of both Hamlet and "the complete works of Shakespeare" (does that include all the poems, btw?) and the Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe and the Chronicles of Narnia. Perhaps this was some weird amalgamation of disparate lists?
There is something funny about saying one has read "only 13" of Shakespeare's plays, Mom. :)
The Da Vinci Code was clearly the most out-of-place single entry on the list. Ugh. I love the basic genre of scholarly thriller, but I could not make myself read that book.
Tam has reminded me that The Life of Pi has a tiger in it, so perhaps I will have to read it. It's funny to me that the "love books about stuff happening on boats" does not extend to this one about a guy on a little boat.
The Phantom Tollbooth was an excellent book. It was full of plays on words, etc. However, younger students couldn't begin to understand and appreciate this book.
Dad has read 20 of the books on the list. 5 he read in English only, 1 in French & English, 4 in German & English, 7 in German only, & 3 in English, German, & French. Dad especially enjoys reading the classics in the original language.
I'm glad you recognized that Iain Banks' The Wasp Factory was horror; I thought it was modern lit. A couple of scenes are unforgettable, and I really, really wish that I had never read it.
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